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Plans for COVID-19 Hospital… More than US$5M needed to retrofit Ocean View Hotel
…Purchasing arrangement still being worked out – Winston Jordan
By Shikema Dey
It would cost the incumbent coalition in excess of US$5 million (G$1B) to “retrofit” or transform the old Ocean View International Hotel into a state of the art COVID-19 facility, according to Finance Minister Winston Jordan.
Finance Minister Winston Jordan (Jordan)
Works are ongoing at the Ocean View International Hotel (Photo credit: Robin Singh)
But this sum does not include a possible purchase price.
The National COVID-19 Task Force selected the Ocean View Hotel as a facility for the incubation, isolation and quarantine of COVID-19 patients, taking into consideration the PAHO/WHO 20,000 projected cases by early May.
Minister Jordan in an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI) said “we had to open centers to receive these different cases, the biggest one being at the Ocean View Hotel and Convention Centre and retrofitting that facility will cost us in excess of a billion dollars, just to retrofit it.”
“That is not including the purchase price,” he asserted. According to Jordan too, “that’s a different matter which we can’t deal with right now.” Added to that, he mentioned that the cost will increase exponentially when the facility gets up and running.
Additionally, government will have to fork out billions more to renovate the other earmarked facilities to house COVID-19 patients. One such facility is the old Guyana Broadcasting Corporation building on High Street, Georgetown.
Jordan reported that the building will expend more funds due to its “terrible state.”
The Finance Minister explained that “more and more of our resources, slender as they are in the best of times and now will have to be reprioritized to fighting the disease frontally so our attention right now is turned to that.”
His comments emerged after many questions were raised as to why billions of dollars were being spent to transform an old, flood prone building as opposed to a readily available facility.
The Health Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Colette Adams, had clarified that the owners of the hotel were the first to respond to the request and given the approaching timeline and gravity of the pandemic, works immediately commenced at the facility.
Still, a string of questions are still left unanswered.
There is still no clear indication on the arrangements that government has entered into with the owners of the Ocean View facility. Sources disclosed to Kaieteur News that no contract has been signed. However, works continue on the facility.
Further, no information has been publicized to indicate how the project was awarded to contractors: International Import and Supplies and Ivor Allen Construction.
Kaieteur News understands that while the mentioned firms are the main contractors behind the renovation, there are other contractors working behind the scenes.
A burning question left unanswered is where government plans to source the billion dollars needed to fund the transformation of the Ocean View Hotel, and the other facilities.
The Head of the Task Force, Prime Minister, Moses Nagamootoo, had explained that he did not know where the funds are coming from but noted that they would be coming from “central government.”
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